Esther Brady Crawford - faintstarlite

Things are slowly but surely improving. My mom had two more blood transfusions yesterday. Apparently her white blood cells that are infected with this disease are still attacking and killing her new red blood cells. As they flush more out, it should happen less and less though.

I’m not completely sure why… but they are transplanting an artery from somewhere (I think my sister said her leg) to her neck. Why? I have no clue. With only 4-5min phone calls it’s hard to get the whole picture that quickly.

Anyways, I just wanted to send a big THANK YOU for your continued support in prayer and emails… truly… this has been a global effort, and my family and I are indebted to all of you for lifting us up to our Father in this time of need.

I’ve recieved some positive news about my mom, and some bad news about my dad.

My brother was able to tell me that the doctors seemed to be pleased with her current progress with the ongoing blood transfusions. It’s unclear how much longer this will take – but this is the riskiest stage of the process.

They were able to wake her up long enough to talk to my sister. She was able to calm my mom down and explain why she was in the hospital, etc. She was also able to talk to her about me. She asked my mom how she felt about me being in Jordan, and my mom told her, “Tell Esther to stay and finish her time there – I know that is where she is supposed to be.”

So that is my current decision. I’m really trying to believe in faith that my mom will be healed.

The story of the woman with an issue of blood came to my mind last night in prayer at a friend’s house - and my faith has really been growing that she will fully recover.

Unfortunately on my dad’s front – yesterday they found out that his swallowing complications are a result of a cancerous throat tumor – making this the 6th type of cancer in his body. His doctor advised him to return to the hospital, but he has opted not to go. He said, “I want to go out in the prime of my sanity.”

*SIGH* … So that is the current update.

Thank you for your continued prayers. Knowing people around the world are praying for them, my family and myself is what has kept me sane in the last 36hrs.

Last night I recieved devastating news – my mom has had a series of mini strokes that culminated in a big stroke. They discovered the cause was a rare blood disease that needs a series of emergency blood transfusions or else she won’t make it.

Most people who read this know that my dad has been critically ill with cancer for the past several months – so this has really shaken me… to have both of my parents in serious danger of dying at any time.

It seems like more than I can bear at moments.

I left the states with both of them in great health, and since being overseas I’m losing both of them to fatal diseases.

Please keep me, my family and my parents in your prayers. We all desperately need it.

I need guidance about whether to rush home, or to stay here. If I leave then that’s it – I’ll be back for good… and that isn’t what my heart wants to do… but it’s all very confusing right now.

I finally feel like I’ve had some sort of a breakthrough with Arabic. *phew!*.. I can’t really pinpoint the exact day.. but suddenly conjugating verbs, reading at a normal pace, and putting my thoughts together more quickly has suddenly begun to happen – and alll at once!

I’ve been getting by for the last 2-3mths feeling so limited, and knowing my sentence structure was horrible. I know probably 500+ vocab words but being able to access them quickly has been impossible.. my brain seems to have upgraded from card cataloguing to Windows 95. I still have lots to go… but this has been a huge leap of progress that happened quite suddenly.

I’m a bit sad at the thought of going home and not being able to just mix Arabic and English like I do here.. all of my English friends speak in Arabic jargon because we understand it.. and now my brain just thinks of those words before the English word.. because some words, like “Ya-la” (means let’s go) are just more convenient and can be used in like 10,000 daily situations.

This whole time my reading has been at a kindergarten level.. having to pronounce each letter… when suddenly word recognition has began to hit me, allowing me to read at a much more normal pace.

I go through phases where my language confidence is either high, medium, low, or very low. I’ve been stuck in the low category for quite awhile.. feeling like I was quite limited because of the amount of time it took me to find the right words I wanted to say.. translating what they said .. and then retranslating what I wanted to say… ahhhhh…what a SLOW process that is!

I still need to do that when the conversation gets more involved, but for a lot of everyday topics and language I’m beginning to phase out the need to translate.. thank God!!

Yesterday I met with my new language partner.. who is a really awesome girl that I randomly met while walking on campus the other day… and she decided to test me by having our conversation in Arabic for awhile and she was like, “Wow, I didn’t expect you to be able to say all that – and using fusha (Modern Standard Arabic)” and that really gave me a big boost of confidence. Plus, I’m excited about our friendship… she’s a great girl and we really click.

Well I’m gonna be late for class if I don’t get moving, so I better get going. =)